Splendor Solis“Unique and unrepeatable first editions, strictly limited to 987

numbered and authenticated copies”

The Splendor Solis codex dated 1582 and housed in the British Library, London, is themost beautiful treatise on alchemy ever made. The imagination and lyricism of its trulymarvellous illustrations are awe-inspiring even to those not familiar with this subject.This sumptuously illustrated treatise is attributed to Salomon Trismosin, possibly a penname of Ulrich Poysel, the master of the legendary Paracelsus. The secrets of kabba-lah, astrology and alchemic symbolism are revealed on 22 folios bearing full-page illus-trations with a wealth of colour and almost Baroque profusion of detail.

This manuscript features 22 large paintings surrounded by floral or animal motifsbelonging to the North-European style of Renaissance miniature. Like the context andthe contents of book itself, all the illustrations are impenetrable and difficult to unders-tand. Particularly noteworthy are the now famous Glaskolben or glass flasks depictedin a lavish painting in the centre, surrounded by typical town and country scenes of latemedieval Germany beneath a celestial image of a pagan god that seems to endow theimage as a whole with unity and meaning.

The motifs in each glass flask– allegorical and poetically suggestive images characte-rised by boundless imagination – represent the splendour of Trismosin’s mystical kno-wledge, gleaned, he says, from «kabbalistic and magical books». Indeed, in a covert andyet precise manner this cryptic and strangely poetic treatise conveys the secrets of theelements in nature, along with their combinations, blends, powers and influences.

n Shelf mark: British Library, Harley 3469.

n Date: 1582.

n Size: 230 x 330 mm.

n Provenance: Germany.

n 100 pages, 22 full-page miniatures.

n Bound in dark crimson leather with gilt border.

n Full-colour commentary volume.

n «First, unique and unrepeatable edition strictly limited to 987 copies».

The Splendor Solis codex dated 1582 and housed in the BritishLibrary, London, is the most beautiful treatise on alchemy ever made.

The codex has 100 pages written in German in a dainty, German Gothic script. Thetext is embellished with enormous, lavishly decorated initials that are, in themselves, adelight to behold.

The tale of the codex itself is equally interesting. John Evelyn, the court painter ofCharles II of England, saw what is knowntoday as «Harley 3469» in the library atWhitehall Palace on September 2nd 1680.He described it as containing «the proces-ses for the Great Elixir of philosophers»and that it was embellished with paintingsof great beauty. It was subsequently acqui-red by the German theologian JohannCyprianus, thanks to whose heirs it ente-red the private library of that patron ofartists, the powerful, aristocratic and emi-nently bibliophile Harley family. TheBritish Library bought it in 1753 for thenow derisory sum of 10,000 pounds. It isnow considered to be one of its mostvaluable treasures. Not for nothing is theSplendor Solis the most beautiful andsplendid treatise on alchemy ever made.

The philosophical tree. Aeneas is given a branch symbolising successful

rejuvenation by his son, Silvius.

“Plant this tree in the lapis (…), so that the birds in the sky inhabit it and reproduce onits branches; for wisdom rises from there.” (Theatrum Chemicum)

Aenaes, majestically garbed in red, receives a branch from the tree of life from his sonSilvius, a branch that will protect him on his way through the putrefaction and purifyingflames of hell. Everything suggests he will come through unscathed, for Trismosin hasrevealed that the crow’s head has turned white.

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The hermaphrodite rebis with the philosophical egg

The rebis depicted here in the three main colours of the Opus is the “dual body of theart, i.e. the sun and the moon (…), the male and female that beget four children”. Theseare the four elements the androgen holds in his right hand. In the centre is a mirror thatrepresents the Opus or raw material, in which, it is said, the entire world can be seen.

The egg in the other hand means that from the four elements – the shell, white, mem-brane and yolk – the quintessence is born: the chick, which represents the lapis.

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The Saturnal night. A wise man wishing to regain his youth by

controlled boiling

“Ovid tells the tale of a wise old man who wanted to be young again. This meant cut-ting him into pieces and boiling them thoroughly but not too much. The limbs wouldthen come together again and recover their youthful vigour.” (S. Trismosin)

The dove is the spirit (the distillate) that rejoins what remains of the body after rot-ting. “When Saturn is baptised with his own waters, the black raven takes flight.” (B.Gutwasser, 1728)

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The sun reigns in the sign of Leo

The Sun reigns in the sign of Leo which is to be fed with matter.

The monster’s green wings confirm Hartlaub’s theory that this refers to iron sulphate, anextremely caustic product known as copperas or vitriol or green lion. The sun is in theopus phase known as digestion.

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Venus and the pleasures of the senses. The imminent transition of

wetness to dryness

The appearance of Venus in the firmament announces the pleasures of the senses; a marve-llous interplay of colours that Basilius Valentius calls a peacock’s tail. Like the rainbow, thepeacock’s tail heralds in, according to this author, “the imminent transition from wetness todryness.” (Philosophischer Hauptschlüssel [Key philosophical interpretation], Lepzig, 1718).

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Lapis, the winged, red lion

The inner sun as a symbol of lapis, the winged, red lion that “wrenches man from this valeof tears, i.e. from the tribulations of poverty and disease, raising him up amongst praiseand honour far from the fetid Egyptian waters that are the everyday fare of mortal man(…)” (Nicolas Flamel, Chymische Werke, ed. Hamburg, 1681).

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